how to get lo to eat hard food and or chunks of food

[lilesMom]

have been feeding purees, amd introducing finger foods.
he has had some,
love half grapes ( sucks inside out, has choked a little twice but spat up)
banana, biscotti, rusk.
have homemade rusk and carrot and brocholi for him to try today.
but my qs is , how and when to start with harder food?
i have tried grated carrot, he spits it out or sicks it up.
i have gradually been making his purees more mashed than pureed.
do i continue slow transition or do i move to lots of foods and let him have what he likes?
tryin for mix of blw and traditional.
he has reflux so im not sure if thats makes a difference.
it did earlier but he is a lot better reflux wise than he was.
any advice please ladies .
ive been on sticky finger foods thread but it doesnt say what age people started which foods at.
thanks guys.
sorry its long winded

 

[the why bird]

We started with soft finger food from six months, which is when we started solids.

Banana, buttered toast, strips of pancake, cooked carrot. Things cut into thin strips were easier than cubes plus I felt safer because she was more likely to hold it in her fist and bite/gum it rather than shove the whole thing in her mouth. It's hard for them to choke on a stick of food (unlike a cube or a whole grape or something) and most kids will gag and spit before they get close to choking - but of course never let them eat alone, just in case.

I can't say exactly when we added harder things, we just sort of kept an eye on her while she ate and tried things gradually. Crackers were a good hard food to begin with. Apples, but cut into fairly thin slices so they weren't too chunky to bite. I didn't really give her raw carrot sticks or anything really hard until she got her first molars at about 18 months. Now she eats pretty much everything we eat.

 

[Dollybird]

Ripe pears are a great "harder" finger food. My LO loves them and properly bites bits off and chews and swallows it. Xxx

 

[lilesMom]

Thanks fir answers xxx
Was just afraid of choking
Don't want to let it too late in case i make him only like soft food but no rush yet

 

[Dollybird]

Another good one is those baby rice cakes. I was a bit anxious about them but actually they turned out to be one of the things he managed best.. That was probably a turning point cause it's when I began to trust him a bit more with food if u know what I mean? And peppers are good.. He's not really chewing those yet but sucking on them.. I figure he just hasn't worked out yet that they're chewable.. Or maybe they are just too tough. I also give him little sticks of cheese, he does well with these too and they are a good practise chew.. Not to tough xxx

 

[MindUtopia]

You can try anything from 6 months (except whole nuts or anything with honey in it), so really anything you can think of is worth a try. The key really is to just let him be and explore and not be hovering over him or trying to encourage him to eat. Let him play with it and he'll figure it out. Roasted veg (carrots and parsnips) were literally my daughters first food. They're sweet and easy for them to suck the soft middle out of. Also, any sort of spread you can put on toast or rice cakes. It took my daughter having teeth to eat much toast, but rice cakes she could handle from 6 months and before any teeth. We put hummus, avocado, peanut butter, or mashed banana on them. Pieces of toasted bagel with cream cheese are also great because they can lick off the cream cheese even if they can't quite eat the bagel yet. Bananas are good, like you said. I usually cut them into 3 equal size chunks and she has been able to manage that well from about 7 months (once her hand got big enough to get a grip on it). Plain pasta is also good. Any sort of tube like shape. I found at first that putting sauce on it made it too slippery, so we just did it without sauce or with melted cheese on top. My daughter also really loves twice-baked potatoes, basically you bake a small potato, scoop out the inside, mash it up with some cheese, butter, herbs if you want to add them, then stuff back inside the potato skins and bake again with cheese on top. She's been eating these from probably 7 months. Porridge fingers or balls might be worth trying too, if he already likes porridge. You can find some recipes online. We did these from maybe 6.5 months.

As for choking, really don't stress about it. The risk of choking is actually less with finger foods than with feeding mashed or chunky foods by spoon because they have more control over where food ends up in the mouth and how quickly they eat. My daughter has never choked once and we've done BLW from the start, never did purees, she's now just over 1.

 

[lilesMom]

Thanks guys.
Some great ideas for us xxx